29sep2004: Interesting
exchange on the Jubilee Line today.
At London Bridge one of those really mad homeless characters staggered
on - mumbling incoherent incantations between wild flailing gestures and chugs
of Super. A real Tom o' Bedlam.
I'd had a shitty day and it was time for some fun. As he did the homeless
mad bastard equivalent of 'let's go round the table and update each other on
our projects' in the tube carriage, I composed my response. When he reached me,
I said:
"Hoots mon! Dinnae my eyes deceive me? 'Tis my old friend Mad Jack
McSporran, tis it not?"
(Made up the name on the spur of the moment.)
'Mad Jack' blinks his rheumy old eyes, can't think of anything, and takes
another chug.
"Ye remember me! Crazy Chris McWorth, most famous pub fighter in
all the Highlands!"
More blinks and lots of 'talking' (mumbles) from Jack, who then staggers
off at Green Park. The carriage relaxes as the doors swish closed... and I got
a round of applause!
Life should be like this.
28sep2004: I try not to think about America these days.
Everywhere, wherever you go in Europe, Asia, the rest of the world - utter
gloom and despair at the thought that it now seems certain Dubya will still be
in the White House end of November.
His environmental record is letting the world rot. His economic policy
is non-existent. His approach to diplomacy has poisoned the USA's relations with
the rest of the world. His foreign policy has turned millions of people who supported
the USA's values into its active opponents. His military adventurism has turned
an unpleasant but harmless Iraq into a breeding ground for suicide bombers. And
his uncritical support for some really quite nasty people in Israel has made
the USA's grand values of fairness look like a joke.
But thanks to that vast mass of uninformed voters between the coasts,
this spoilt brat now seems certain to be causing trouble for another four years.
I just hope the rest of the world can survive him - because America is already
lost.
28sep2004: It's time for a new bike.
I'm not doing another Triathlon on my mountain bike. Ever. I ride for
fun rather than speed, but when fat guys are dropping me on road by the hundred,
I need to step out of my MTB mindset and into the realms of aero tubes, compact
geometry, and a Really Big Ring. (My top gear, a 48/13 I think, equates to somewhere
about halfway up a road bike's speed-multiplying armoury.)
But a new house isn't exactly easy on the bank balance, so I'm biding
my time and designing the thing on paper before I plunk down any squids. First
few list items are now decided. I already knew I'd want a Dura-Ace drivetrain,
probably with a replacement 56t big ring - and certainly road SPDs rather than
Looks. But after this weekend's Bike Show I've settled on a frame: the Cervelo
P3. Brilliantly aerodynamic tubes - properly ovalised from scratch, not just
'squashed' roundies whose semicircular front scumbles up the airflow no differently
to a circular tube - and nice compact geometry with some great tweaks; get that
arc-shaped seatstay that hugs the rear wheel.
And they even do a carbon version that shaves 100g off the frame weight.
Where's my bank manager's address? It's time to start being very
nice to him.
26sep2004: An interesting diagram of the nearby Rotherhithe
Tunnel, one of London's funnier subterra wormholes (the entrance is practically
impossible to spot, and every time someone visits me the first call I expect
is how to find the Rotherhithe tunnel.)
Seeing tunnels from the outside is fascinating. For example, I've always
thought of the Channel Tunnel as straight, yet it zigzags along both up/down
and left/right vectors beneath the earth, hugging one particular (waterproof)
seam of rock. Getting those two tunnels to meet up in the middle, when each was
being built outwards from the French and British sides by different teams of
engineers, is one of the truly great engineering stories.
25sep2004: 'Collateral'. A great film, especially
when a headache left me feeling too lousy for the pool.
Tom's as good as ever - overshadowing Jamie Foxx. But the real star
is LA by night. Michael Mann's photography captures perfectly that strange sense
of paranoia and disorientation in Los Angeles. The feeling that somehow, this
city was not built for human beings.
Years ago, poverty stricken while exploring the States, I decided to save
a bus fare by walking back to a Venice Beach hostel. Along Rodeo Drive. Trouble
is, I was in Beverley Hills at the time. What looked like a short walk on a map
turned into about twenty km of looping left and right along a road with absolutely
no sidewalk; when I got back to Venice late at night, I was easily the craziest
person on the boardwalk, homeless guys included.
But the film... shot on digital stock brings out the sodium wash of LA's
streetlights brilliantly. So don't go to see the story, although the script's
better than average: treat it as a visit to an art gallery, and spend your two
hours looking at pictures in the dark.
21sep2004: That's it: final proof Britain's Liberal
Democrats are a bunch of useless bloody twats. I respected Charles Kennedy
for his anti-war stance, despite him being wetter behind the ears than a drowned
rat. But his shadow cabinet looks like a gang of puny schoolboys hiding under
the bed to avoid PE class.
Pledging a tax increase to 50% for anyone earning over £100K - as
an election promise? A tax on dogs? Trumpetting a health policy that appears
to have been photocopied from New Labour's first election manifesto? Bloody hell,
this whole democracy thing really isn't working.
19sep2004: fumbled and pushed until four photos
of my freshly-painted stairs looked halfway artistic. I'm calling it 'Mr Escher
comes to Deptford'.
19sep2004: The pro- and anti-hunting factions continue
to rage. The thing I'm most angry about is the way this minor issue about hunting
with dogs is taking up so much legislative time. Despite what the anti- faction
says, it's got nothing to do with animal welfare: like many so-called 'activists',
they're simply little-minded people who've taken up the cause because they haven't
got the brains or the energy to deal with bigger issues. If they care about the
animals, what are they doing about battery farming, which causes some billions
more hours of animal suffering per year?
The pro-hunting lobby must 'Respect democracy', says Blair. Hah. This
isn't democracy; it's the tyranny of the lynch mob. Know what democracy is? Democracy
is a locked room containing ten preteen girls, eleven paedophiles, and majority
voting to decide what happens next.
17sep2004: A bad week to be a British security head.
First Batman makes it into
the palace, then some country
folk wander into the House of Commons. Then a newspaper tested whether
that put them on high alert, and it, er, didn't. This comes after a mole
snapped the Queen's breakfast and an Osama
impersonator hassled Prince Harry.
Yet not one of these people was ever in real danger of having a cap
popped in one's ass - which illustrates the essential difference between the
British and American approaches to national security. The USA bases it on preventing
anything *ever* happening, the UK on what *seems likely to actually* happen.
A Batman at a White House window would leave Pennsylvania Avenue in small bloody
shreds; in London, he chats with police and gets passed tea by palace servants
before jumping down to applause.
I think, on balance, I prefer the British system (which is one of
the few areas where British policy is closer to Europe's.) Give people the benefit
of the doubt. Rule with engagement and good humour; shoving a gun in someone's
faces is a last resort, not a standard precaution. Because it makes fewer people
hate you, the overall situation actually stays *safer*.
And of course, such gunboat diplomacy marks the high point of American
supremacy, just as as it did Britain in the 1860s, when the Empire seemed as
if it'd go on for a thousand years. Starting sometime in 2003, the USA's influence
in the world started to fade. Whoever sets the tone of the world at the end of
this century - probably the Chinese, possibly the Indians - I hope they'll have
the confidence to treat other races with more respect than the whiteys did in
the 19th and 20th.
13sep2004: Oh wow. The new Lynx deoderant ad is
amazing. A guy and girl get out of bed, put on their underwear, walk outside,
find their shirts, walk further, find other articles of clothing as they go.
They find their last shoes, in a supermarket, right next to (their) supermarket
trollies. Which they then wheel away... which have been sitting there since last
night... without a word of goodbye. A real City story. Brilliant ad. Intelligent
and sexy, and relevant to the product - you'd need deoderant if you met Ms Perfect-for-one-night
in the aisle, you'd want to make sure. I want to call all my friends right now
and talk to them about this ad. If I had any friends. And if they ever called
me.
12sep2004: Try going to the supermarket and only
buying what you went in there to get. Just try it. It CANNOT be done. It's so
hard I've added it to my solo street games. 08sep2004: RAT!
Relaxing on the sofa, and a soft round black shape scuttled along the
skirting. Furk!
Only to be expected I suppose. It's been wet and turned cool this
evening, and I'm still doing up this house; there have been bags of rubbish everywhere
for weeks. I gaze through a red wine haze at the corner of the lounge - where
the little furball scuttled off to - but he never emerges from behind the TV.
I'm fairly blase about urban wildlife; when living in Hongkong, I
once looked out the window to see a football-sized rodent shinnying nonchalantly
up the drainpipe outside. Nothing unusual in that, except - I lived on the fourteenth
floor. Since then I've been pretty much unshockable. But that doesn't mean I
shouldn't do something about it.
Maybe this house is on one of Ken Livingstone's so-called 'Rat runs',
and he's avoiding the congestion charge. Or he's a disgruntled Central Londoner
trying to get out of the rat race. (Insert further rat-related jokes here.)
A late night trip to Tesco is in order. Where would rat poison be? Presumably
not among the fresh produce. I buy wasp repellant and hope he'll find it at least
unpleasant.
07sep2004: 'NY-LON' is one of the oddest shows on TV. It's a reflection on today's media culture that at first I thought
it wouldn't be a drama series at all: the Renault logo loomed large on promotional
posters, and I was expecting a narrative-in-commercials like Nicole and her Dad,
or the Gold Blend couple years ago. Or worse, a total mediafuck like the luckyluckystar
movie trailer for Mercedes. But nope, it's a real seven-part series.
It feels different to most British TV, though. For a start, the production
values are surprisingly high - although it was obviously shot on a tight budget.
(All the NY scenes seem to happen on a single street.) The storyline's a romance
between a New York woman and a Londoner. Luckily, the writers have avoided stereotypes:
Edie isn't the typical, Sex-and-the-City style 'All RIGHT already!' harpie -
she's a pleasant schoolteacher whose mild affectations are no different to any
educated American's. And Michael isn't the stuttering Hugh Grant type you'd expect;
he's a confident banker of Italian extraction who isn't outclassed by Edie's
articulacy the way most British are. (Americans are a verbal people; any American
could give away a hundred IQ points to most Brits and still outbox them in conversation.)
In other words, Edie and Michael are normal people, leading normal lives.
And that leads to the oddest thing about the series: NOTHING EVER SEEMS
TO HAPPEN!
They meet. They date. They bonk. They split up. They get back together
again. And that's it! It's like real life, and not in the reality TV sense: it's
really as if we're watching two entirely normal people, watching the edited highlights
of their lives, and of course the thing about that is - the edited highlights
of average lives just aren't that interesting. The only unusual thing to happen
in the series so far is a drug addict turning up dead in someone's bed, and hey,
that's all part of everyone's week.
Yet there are constant suggestions that some sort of story is going on.
For example, when Michael's short-lived rebound girlfriend stalked out tonight,
she gathered up his post and flung it into some bushes. Interesting story opportunity
- who might have picked up his post? Bulky envelopes, such as those with the
heft to make good televisual tossing, don't get left around on London streets.
But nothing is ever made of it. And there's the option for some glorious locations;
New York and London - where's that underground bar near Embankment, the emotional
visit to Ground Zero? Yet they limit the scenery to the tourist trap of the Waterloo
waterfront and the streets outside the characters' apartments. (I even recognise
Michael's front door: it's in Wapping.)
Even their conversations don't play with the natural differences between
cultures; where's the political gap, the linguistic differences, the upbringings
in gritty Brooklyn and East End? But the culture gap's not even explored; they're
just two people dating whose only point of difference is that they live in different
cities. The split-screen narratives and the time-shifted scenes from different
actors' perspectives are interesting, but nothing original - and not common enough
to be the show's motif.
Perhaps that's it: it's wallpaper TV. It's on now, yet I'm blogging
away in Dreamweaver - and I never mix media. Somehow, this show has made itself
part of the scenery... but how I'm supposed to be experiencing the Renault brand
during all this, I'm not sure. Renault stands for stifling normality and fit-in
conventional living? Hmmm... wait a minute...
But this thing has to heat up soon, or it may become the first show
in history to garner Neilsens demonstrably below zero. All I'm doing week after
week is rotating my hands expectantly at the screen and thinking, 'AND...?'
31aug2004: Why am I totally uninterested
in the Hitch Hikers Guide
to the Galaxy movie?
I read the book as a kid, remember carrying it in my schoolbag. I
sat by the radio with a cassette recorder, capturing every episode. I VHS'd the
TV series, bought all the books, inserted lines from it into conversations with
the school nerd clique. Hitchhikers ruled my life.
So I expected some residual interest in the film that's emerging
from 22 years of development hell, but - nope. Seems a bit childish, really.
Without going into the books' appalling flaws - the fourth book lazily realised
in form, structure, content and continuity, the fifth so utterly appalling I
didn't even make it to the end - the HHGTTG narrative simply belongs to a different
decade. The UK's late-70s/early-80s vibe was of tastelessness, paranoia, and
the feeling nothing we did could ever make the slightest difference, as the UK
became a strange, depressing place of nuclear protests and hard socialism; that
feeling's recreated in Adams' work.
But unlike the great writers, his satire hasn't travelled down the
decades well. It's just writing, not literature. And the film's destined to sink
without trace.
I fully realise that instead of 'sink without trace', I should have used
an allusion involving wormholes, exploding planets, or infinite improbability,
but my heart's just not in it.
29aug2004: My heart rules my head. Literally. A
slightly elevated pulse rate yesterday morning indicates overtraining; I've got
to back off for two days. It was time to move the energy expenditure to my brain
anyway; the more time I spend in the pool, the less it feels like swimming and
more like thrashing around.
Most of the techniques I can handle - imagine a solid T-bar across
your shoulders, draw lines across your torso with each thumb, crook each arm
before it enters the water, lean in until the water pushes back. They all work
- but only if used together, and it's a bit like the patting your head and rubbing
your stomach problem, squared. Every time I lean in, I'm so far under the water
I waste the entire energy gain on the next breath, having to power upwards again
to inhale instead of a simple roll to the side. Less free style, more 'Free Willy'.
But anyway, after hoping for three days of activity this holiday
weekend, I'm confined to walking pace for everything. Never thought I'd have
such a problem with sitting around surrounded by books.
